Well, it looks like they overdid it.
In the Balance Dataslate that was released a little over a month ago, the T’au Empire got some significant points reductions. I’d hazard a guess that it would’ve been around a 15 percent drop on average for most units.
At the time, I was a little sceptical. I thought that Games Workshop might’ve gone a little too far, but their reaction was certainly understandable. Many readers will recall that the T’au were down at the bottom of the list when it came to win rates. Only the Leagues of Votann were performing worse than the T’au.
GW aims for a win rate of between 45 and 55 percent for each faction. The T’au were at 38 percent.
Most 40k players knew, then, that GW had to do something, and I’m sure that most players could appreciate that a points reduction was a good way to make the faction more playable.
But I do think that GW went a touch too far.
Over the past couple of weeks we’ve seen some T’au players win tournaments without dropping any games. Moreover, T’au players are taking a variety of units from the index. We don’t just see two blocks of Crisis Suits with a Coldstar Commander leading each in every list. While there is no doubt that this is a popular choice, looking at the lists we see quite a few different choices from the index.
If you’d like a more detailed look at the following lists, do check out this video on recent T’au success from Auspex Tactics. In my opinion, Auspex produces some of the best 40k content on the internet, and I use his work in the above video as the basis for much of this article, so I want to give credit where it is due.
Also, the man produces 40k videos all the time. I don’t know how he gets any sleep. Respect.
Let’s take a look at a couple of these lists, then. Logan Antonation recently won the Goonhammer Open Canada, a 40-player tournament. Antonation won all six of his games, and one of the most interesting things about his list is that it doesn’t include the six-man Crisis Suit unit. Indeed, we don’t see any Crisis Suits at all.
Instead, among other things, we find two Riptides, both armed with the Amplified Ion Accelerator. We find Longstrike and two Hammerheads. We find two units of Breachers, two Cadre Fireblades, and two Devilfish transports.
When the Railgun lost its ability to ignore invulnerable saves in this edition, I was sceptical that it would be a useful asset to T’au players, but clearly I was mistaken. This list uses the Hammerhead Railgun as one of two methods to deal with big targets. The other is the Seeker Missile. Antonation takes four Piranhas, each armed with two Seeker Missiles each.
In the current index, Seeker Missiles are an excellent choice to take on big targets, but here we see that the Hammerhead is still a viable option.
Let’s take a look at another list. Colin McDade won all six of his games at Warzone Houston, a 125-player tournament. Given the strength of Crisis Suits at the moment, McDade’s list looks much more like what we might expect.
Here we find two Coldstar Commanders and 12 Crisis Suits, all armed with Cyclic Ion Blasters. With the correct support, a six-man Crisis unit with a Coldstar will destroy most units in the game at the moment.
Taking this unit twice, then, is a pretty good idea.
Elsewhere, we see strong choices as well. A Ghostkeel, two units of Stealths, Piranhas, Tetras, Kroot Hounds. We’re on very solid ground here. McDade leans into the best unit in the faction and complements it with a strong supporting cast.
Let’s take a look at one more list. Thomas Ogden won the Showdown at Frogtown, winning all five of his games. Frogtown was a 26-player tournament.
Ogden’s list includes 12 Crisis Suits. There’s only the one Coldstar this time, but we’re still in familiar territory. The interesting choice here is three Skyray Gunships and two Sun Shark Bombers.
We again see the depth of the post-Dataslate index. Earlier, we found a list with three Hammerheads; here we find a list with three Skyrays. Both of the factions main gunships are starting to see regular play.
The Sun Sharks are a more interesting choice, however. Put simply, the Sun Shark isn’t particularly good. The rules of 10th made aircraft less potent across board, and the index wasn’t particularly kind to the T’au bomber.
In the video, Auspex suggests that Ogden thought that the Sun Shark worked slightly differently than it actually does. I’ve not looked into this myself, but it could certainly be the case. Regardless, this does speak to the skill of Ogden as a player, adapting his game and coming out on top in unusual circumstances.
I would argue that these three lists illustrate the point that I want to make with this article: GW took things just a little bit too far. It seems that we’re seeing quite a significant swing in fortune with the T’au Empire at the moment. Before the Balance Dataslate, the faction was quite poor. Now, the faction is quite strong.
Points are certainly difficult to get right. This is clear enough. But I think that this issue also speaks to a wider issue with the game itself. 40k is very tricky to balance. There are just so many moving parts. It’s impossible to know how changing the points cost of even a handful of units will affect the game. And we’ve not even talked about changing the rules of a unit.
Or, to put it another way, points updates will have many unintended consequences. 40k is too big a game to properly assess what will happen with each change that GW makes.
Does this mean that GW should make fewer changes? I would argue against that position. But I would say that making updates and changes more conservatively would be a prudent way to go about it.
However — and this is the main point — it’s very easy to criticise from the sidelines.
Game balance is difficult, and I’ve no doubt that the fortunes of the T’au, and indeed all other factions, will change in the months to come.
This quote from the original T’au codex sums it up: ‘The one constant in the universe is change. The wise adapt.’
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